Last Friday, after months and months of intense hype, Apple finally released the iPhone into the wild. Some are hailing this new gizmo – a mobile phone, camera, multimedia player, and wireless web browser all in one – as a revolutionary step that changes the rules for multiple industries. But how will it affect libraries?

What do you do when a patron wants a rare or out-of-print book that your library doesn’t carry? Some libraries (including Cincinnati Public Library) are discovering Print on Demand (POD) services that can create and bind a single copy of these otherwise hard-to-find works. A few libraries are even looking into setting up this service in-house.

As the Second Annual World eBook Fair begins tomorrow (offering a month’s free access to over 750,000 eBooks), the prospects of the eBook market are still pretty murky, at best. If they’re not going to replace regular books, then are they good for anything?

There’s a new search engine coming down the pike called Powerset, which aims to provide a “natural language” search engine that will, in theory, be easier to use than the usual keyword-oriented search engines. The company has already attracted a lot of attention (and investors), but has yet to unveil their product.